Abstract

This paper traces the phenomenological debate on intersubjectivity from Husserl’s and Stein’s original accounts of empathy to Jean-Luc Marion’s turn toward donation. After outlining how Husserl’s analogical apperception undergirds shared objectivity, the study reviews the critiques of Levinas and Sartre, who argue that otherness exceeds egoic constitution and demands an asymmetric ethical relation. Marion radicalizes this insight by portraying the other’s face as a saturated phenomenon whose overabundance renders the subject an adonated recipient of an unsolicited gift. This conceptual shift relocates community from cognitive consensus to an economy of hospitality, where responsibility arises from fidelity to the other’s excess. The essay concludes that the phenomenology of donation not only supplements the limits of classical empathy but also provides a framework for rethinking politics, justice, and anthropology considering the constitutive vulnerability of human existence. © 2025 Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). All rights reserved.